CARNIVAL BEGINS ASH WEDNESDAY

Carnival does affect the behaviour of some children. But Minister of
Education Hazel Manning must make up her mind about the causes of the
daily stabbings, sex trade, drug trade, bullying, gang wars and
violence by students against each other or teachers.

Relying on advisers, she last week blamed drugs for the violence. The
week before, she claimed the violence was a seasonal affair and that
it will die down after Carnival. Both theories cannot be true, even if
drugs may have a constant impact on many aspects of student behaviour.

For example, students dependent on drugs may engage in bullying other
students to get money to buy drugs. They may engage in stealing or
even to eat other children's lunches.

Some of the schools' sex trade may involve addicts exchanging sex for
drugs. Students connected to pimps or drug dealers may use violence to
settle contracts with the rules of their criminal employers.

All of these things are (may be) happening, but they are not seasonal.
The fundamental problems reflect the breakdown in authority at the
level of the Ministry and at home.

Children at denominational schools do not show the Minister's seasonal
pattern of Carnival violence. Denominational schools have a good
record of parents' involvement with the management of the schools, the
principals and the boards.

The Minister's Carnival revelation has it merits. Culture, like
religion, is a system of communication of ideas and preferred patterns
of behaviour using symbols. The cross and the trident are religious
symbols in Christianity and Hinduism.

Bhajans and hymns are also symbols. The rituals of puja, like the
discussions between a Hindu parent and a child, also take place
through language or sound symbols.

The symbols of calypsoes encourage children to "get on bad, mash down
de place, wine on a bam bam, jook like a dog, wine like a hog," and
many such incitements to lawlessness, immoral behaviour and lewd
unlawful sex.

Schoolchildren are prohibited by laws from consenting to the sexual
activities Carnival songs encourage or even demand. There was a
Jamaican song which was popular on maxi-taxis in which the little
girls in the song plead, "Please help me. Take my virginity."

Some calypso role models are drug addicts. As role models they are the
antithesis of the family life and patterns of behaviour which produce
law-abiding responsible children. The Minister is right to associate
Carnival with violence.

She must also associate Carnival with sexual promiscuity and the
spread of AIDS and with the abuse of alcohol and other illegal drugs.
The effects are not confined to Carnival season as the Minister seems
to think. They cannot be so confined.

When children get entrapped in the Carnival culture of lewdness,
sexual irresponsibility, the flaunting of nakedness and irresponsible
behaviour, it does not end on Ash Wednesday morning. Carnival actually
begins on Ash Wednesday!

This country must face the fact that the soca songs at traditional and
new chutney calypso tents provide an unmixed incitement to violence
and sexual irresponsibility. One calypso this year glorifies the
career of kidnappers and bandits.

Such symbols as entertainment for children do have consequences.
Children who are constantly told that people who have material wealth
are thieves while at the same time are incited to crave such wealth
are put in a difficult situation.

There are almost no calypsoes extolling the virtues of hard work or
self-sacrifice to acquire education or provide property or wealth.
Such children who are influenced by TV or BET get a distorted message
from the calypsonians and the media. They advise that it is good to
consume wealth but do not encourage sacrifices to get it.

They are told to get fancy cars and designer clothes to be somebody,
while the calypsonian blames every businessman, even the small vendor
who may have mortgaged his family to the bank. Carnival symbols,
especially calypsoes, have become dangerous to children.

Calypsoes are now a preferred symbolic instrument for spreading racial
hatred. Many studies have shown that the State's control of arts is an
essential step in controlling the minds of the people.

The point is that radio, film and television have an immense impact on
the problems of plural societies. And Carnival is pre-eminently about
symbols which influence behaviour.

Children in our schools have been known to abuse their
Indo-Trinidadian teachers with the words taken verbatim from calypso!

The use of calypso to spread anti-Hindu messages or hatred against the
Indo-Trinidadian community is a recent phenomenon. This must impact
negatively on the psyche of children who are misled by calypso role
models and the racist symbolism.

Mrs Manning has done us a favour by linking Carnival with school
violence. She needs to commission a study on the impact of racist
calypsoes on children. Another study should investigate the impact of
calypso role models and their songs to the local AIDS epidemic which
is similar to the epidemic in black or Sub-Saharan Africa.

Carnival culture may be dangerous to children in many ways. The
Minister must do more than make a tenuous connection. She needs to
study the impact of the role models and their symbols on the endemic
violence and lawlessness in our schools and society.

SATNARAYAN MAHARAJ is the Secretary General of the Sanatan Dharma
Maha Sabha